Policy Analyst Joel joined The New Zealand Initiative after completing his Master’s in Economics at Victoria University where his work focused on productivity, labour economics and game theory. Before this, he completed a Bachelor of Science from the University of Otago, majoring in Microbiology.
Currently, Joel is working on education research using data from Statistic’s New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI).
Links to latest reports:
Research note: To graduation and beyond (2021)
Research Note: Educational Performance and Funding in New Zealand: Are our children getting the education they deserve? (2021)
Research Note: The State of Schooling (2020)
Insights and Excellence: School success in New Zealand (2020)
In Fairness to our Schools: Better measures for better outcomes (2019)
Research Note: Tomorrow’s Schools: Data and evidence (2019)
Scroll down to read the rest of Joel's work.
Phone: +64 4 499 0790
Philosopher George Santayana famously said, “those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it” – unless it was too intense and bad for our mental health. Wait, no, that’s not right. Read more
For too long many New Zealanders have viewed low-decile schools as lower quality. And it is easy to see why. Read more
Some call it jet lag without the duty-free, others call it a government time heist. Most people just call it daylight savings. Read more
Determining what works and what does not is important for any business developing better products and services. And keeping a close watch on quality control matters a lot too. Read more
School evaluation is an essential component of the education system. Identifying high-performing and underperforming schools is vital for building an evidence base for what works to improve education outcomes for students. Read more
Everyone has their guilty pleasures. For many people that guilty pleasure is a cheesy melodramatic soap opera. Read more
Just on the horizon is the promise of better management of student data and the potential for better research on New Zealand school performance. Better data and insights are invariably the precursor to improvement and better outcomes for students. Read more
In the next 10 years, 100,000 more children are expected to enrol in New Zealand schools. In response to this “unprecedented population growth”, the Ministry of Education established the National Education Growth Plan (NEGP) earlier this month. Read more
Many New Zealanders are living longer and healthier lives than at any point in history. In the last quarter century, health outcomes in New Zealand have improved across the board. Read more
A shocking 700,000 individuals - or 14.3 percent of New Zealand’s population - either partially completed or did not complete the 2018 Census. More shocking than the numbers themselves was how this information was made public. Read more
In a letter to a select committee last week, Liz MacPherson, chief statistician of Statistics New Zealand (SNZ), said about 240,000 individuals had only partially completed the 2018 census. This, on top of the 480,000 individuals who did not complete the census at all, increased the census data gap to more than 700,000 individuals (or 14.3 per cent of the population). Read more
“Decile is not a proxy for school quality”. Principals, teachers and education professionals have said this for years, and yet students have been flocking out of low decile schools and into high decile schools all this while. Read more
A comprehensive and year-long econometric analysis of data for 400,000 students undertaken by The New Zealand Initiative reveals there are no significant differences in school performance between schools of different deciles. Adjusted for the different student populations they serve, the vast majority of New Zealand’s secondary schools create the education outcomes we would expect from them. Read more
Scroll down your news feed, what do you see? Trump’s latest dumb tweet, an update on the crisis in Venezuela, maybe something on Brexit? Read more
Comparing schools is complex at best – and a nightmare at worst. Every school has a different cohort of students, each with their own unique background. Read more